by Paul Celan
Another way of explaining the dearth of attention Threadsuns received is by taking into consideration the fact that it appeared just one year after Breathturn (which received marked attention, even if an attention already afflicted by puzzlement about a perceived “hermeticism” that would greet all the late books) rather than the four or five years usually separating Celan’s volumes. Moreover, 1968 saw a plethora of other Celan books come out, including a number of volumes of translations (William Shakespeare, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Jules Supervielle, and André du Bouchet); a complete cycle of poems, Eingedunkelt | Tenebrae’d, published in a book gathering such “abandoned works” (see p. 543); and, most important in terms of negative impact on the visibility of Threadsuns, a volume of selected poems. These Ausgewählte Gedichte, offering poems from all the early volumes up to and including Breathturn, plus the two essays on poetics, edited by Paul Celan himself, were published in the popular Suhrkamp paperback series. The book was an immediate success and for many readers has remained the best introduction to the oeuvre—so much so that when in 1998 the French publisher Gallimard decided to include a Selected Paul Celan in the prestigious Poésie/Gallimard paperback series, they used that very same volume, translated and presented by Jean-Pierre Lefebvre.
I
“Augenblicke” | “Eye-glances”
September 19, 1965, Paris. The volume opens with a compound noun containing that most loaded of Celan’s words: Auge, “eye.”
Augenblicke | Eye-glances: The normal English translation would be “moments,” or, if one wanted to insist on the spatial sense of the word rather than on the temporal, “glances.” Although the German compound is in common usage, I have preferred to create an English neologism, “eye-glances,” in order to retain the seed-image of the eye.
steh | stand: See the various notes on Celan’s insistence on this upright stance, for example, “Es stand” | “It stood” (p. 617) and “Wirk nicht voraus” | “Do not work ahead” (p. 575). See also my introduction to PCS (p. 6).
“Frankfurt, September” | “Frankfurt, September”
September 5–6, 1965, Frankfurt am Main. The title points to the time of the Frankfurter Buchmesse, the great annual book fair visited by Celan, and the poem makes use of images from the fair. Celan spent ten days in Frankfurt at that time, working with his cotranslator Kurt Leonard on the volume of translations of poems by Henri Michaux that would be published the following year by S. Fischer Verlag, his last book for that publisher, as he would move to Suhrkamp Verlag. Wiedemann writes that, according to Klaus Reichert (who worked at Suhrkamp and Insel Verlag, and in front of whose house the poem was conceived), Celan saw this poem as his final reckoning with S. Fischer Verlag (BW, p. 751). Celan wrote to Gisèle (PC/GCL, #273): “I am doing fine. This morning, in fact, I am in a little poetic trance, a kind of effervescence: I’ve written a little poem I’ll copy out for you tonight or tomorrow, and that I’ll comment for you.” (He never wrote the proposed commentary.)
Blinde, licht- / bärtige | Blind, light- / bearded: Compare the expression “Lichtbart / der Patriarchen” | “lightbeard of / the patriarchs” in the poem “Tübingen, Jänner” from Die Niemandsrose (PCS, p. 79) with the adjectival form luftalgenbärtig in the poem “Die Eine” | “The one” (p. 170). Notice that the (by this time rare) title of the poem is grammatically constructed on the model of the earlier title “Tübingen, Jänner.”
Stellwand | partition: The movable wall or partition with a portrait of Freud that the publisher S. Fischer had set up at the book fair the previous year, but which had been saved and which Celan had seen.
Maikäfertraum | cockchaferdream: Compare Celan’s use of the old Maikäferlied in the poem “In der Luft” from Die Niemandsrose. Given the Kafka quote that follows here, the Käfer also calls to mind that author’s beetle. Another possible reading could point to the scarabaeus symbolizing resurrection in Egyptian mythology (SPUR, p. 289). Compare also the poem “Was näht” | “What sews” from Snowpart (p. 326), which contains the line “ein Käfer erkennt dich” | “a chafer recognizes you.” There is also a link with Freud’s analysis of a dream involving cockchafers (given as “May beetles” in the English translation) (Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, #203, p. 324).
Zum letzen- / mal Psycho- / logie | For the last / time psycho- / logy: Citation from Kafka’s ninety-third entry in the posthumous collection Betrachtungen über Sünde, Leid, Hoffnung und den wahren Weg (Kafka, Hochzeitsvorbereitungen, #204, p. 30). Celan had already used the phrase in a withheld letter to Kurt Hirschfeld from January 8, 1961, in connection with the Goll affair: “‘For the last time, psychology!’ What is essential, I believe, is not the representation of the motivations and inducements, but the unmasking of the malice (and of its allies)” (BW, p. 752).
Simili- / Dohle | imitation / jackdaw: In Czech the word kavka means Dohle, “jackdaw.” Compare the following comment on the expression “Simili- / Dohle”: “As Kafka’s name means ‘jackdaw,’ the Kafka family had the image of the jackdaw on its letterhead; at the Frankfurt Book Fair with its tax-deductible work-related conversations, it is, however, an ‘imitation jackdaw’ that breakfasts” (SPUR, p. 290). See also Kafka’s story “A Hunger Artist”: “He was happiest, however, when morning came and a lavish breakfast was brought for them at his own expense, on which they hurled themselves with the appetite of healthy men after a hard night’s work without sleep. True, there were still people who wanted to see in this breakfast an unfair means of influencing the observers, but that was going too far, and if they were asked whether they wanted to undertake the observers’ night shift for its own sake, without the breakfast, they excused themselves. But nonetheless they stood by their suspicions.” (Translation by Ian Johnston; http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/kafka/hungerartist.htm.)
Celan’s closeness to Kafka has been well documented. An odd coincidence, which certainly did not escape Celan, has to do with their names. Kafka wrote in his diary: “Ich heiße hebraïsch Amschel” (In Hebrew my name is Amschel)—close to the word Amsel, “blackbird,” and to Celan’s own original name, Ançel or Antschel.
Der Kehlkopfverschlußlaut / singt | The glottal stop / sings: See the Kafka story “Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk,” which Kafka wrote as he himself was losing his voice in the final stages of laryngeal turberculosis, in German Kehlkopftuberkulose. As Pöggeler notes: “In the final stage of Kafka’s tuberculosis, his larynx closed up—he wasn’t allowed to even speak anymore, and literally starved to death … Does the glottal stop of the larynx (that k—j as in ‘Kehlkoph’ and ‘Kafka’) make for a song—Songs beyond mankind?” (SPUR, p. 290). In the earliest draft of the poem, Celan had inserted between the two title words the Hebrew letter (ayin), a guttural sound, as is the glottal stop (TA, Fadensonnen, p. 6).
“Gezinkt der Zufall” | “Chance, marked”
September 24–26, 1965, Paris, Rosh Hashanah.
Lügen | lies … Meineid schwören | perjure themselves: Probable rumination on the Goll affair.
“Wer / herrscht?” | “Who / rules?”
September 24–October 4, 1965, Paris.
Springkraut | touch-me-not: The plant Impatiens noli-tangere, in German Großes Springkraut or Rühr-mich-nicht-an, the only representative of the order Impatiens that originates in central Europe, is known in English as touch-me-not balsam, yellow balsam, jewelweed, or wild balsam.
Gauklergösch | juggler jaws: Celan had considered this word (as Gaukler-Gösch) as a possible title for the volume Lightduress. The term Gösch was noted several times by Celan in his German edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses: “weiß die Pfoten, rot deine Gösch / dein Balg ist auch ganz lieblich” | “White thy fambles, red thy gan / And thy quarrons dainty is.” This is the second stanza of the canting song, “The Rogue’s Delight in Praise of His Strolling Mort,” which Richard Head includes in his book The Canting Academy (London, 1673, pp. 19–20); in translation: “White thy hands, red thy mouth, /And thy body dainty is” (http://en.wikibooks
.org/wiki/Annotations_to_James_Joyce’s_Ulysses/Proteus/047).
“Die Spur eines Bisses” | “The trace of a bite”
October 5, 1965.
“In der ewigen Teufe” | “In the eternal depth”
October 10, 1965, Paris.
ewigen Teufe | eternal depth: In the Brockhaus-Taschenbuch der Geologie (p. 174): “Keine Faltung geht bis in the ‘ewige Teufe’” (No convolution reaches into “the eternal depth”).
brennst ein Gebet ab | blow up a prayer: Abbrennen (literally, “to burn off”) in mining parlance refers to setting off an explosion (TA, Fadensonnen, p. 14).
“Sichtbar” | “Visible”
October 14, 1965.
Hirnstamm | brainstem: The brainstem (or brain stem) is the posterior stemlike part of the base of the brain that is connected to the spinal cord. The brain stem controls the flow of messages between the brain and the rest of the body, including the corticospinal tract (motor), the posterior column-medial lemniscus pathway (fine touch, vibration sensation, and proprioception), and the spinothalamic tract (pain, temperature, itch, and crude touch). It also controls basic body functions, such as breathing, swallowing, heart rate, and blood pressure, and is pivotal in maintaining consciousness and regulating the sleep cycle. The brain stem consists of the midbrain (mesencephalon), the pons (part of metencephalon), and the medulla oblongata (myelencephalon), the base of the brain, which is formed by the enlarged top of the spinal cord. The medulla oblongata directly controls breathing, blood flow, heart rate, eating, and other essential functions (adapted from MedicineNet.com and other sources). In an article on the risks of psychopharmacopoeia, extant in Celan’s estate, the following sentence occurs: “In contrast to sleeping pills like Luminal the new medications act directly on the brainstem.”
“Umweg- / Karten” | “Detour- / maps”
October 15, 1965, Paris.
folie à deux: Literally, “a madness shared by two,” a psychiatric syndrome in which symptoms of a delusional belief are transmitted from one individual to another; now more often referred to in the medical literature as “shared psychotic disorder” or “induced delusional disorder.” By this time, Paul Celan’s psychological problems had come to a crisis, and he and Gisèle, their relationship having become deeply conflictual, begin speaking of a separation, necessary according to Gisèle, though Celan refuses to entertain the idea. The concept of a “folie à deux” is his reaction to this looming separation.
“Sackleinen-Gugel” | “Sackcloth-mold”
October 17, 1965, Paris.
-fibrille | -fibril: A fibril is a fine fiber, such as a nerve fiber or neurofibril, that is about ten nanometers in diameter.
“Spasmen” | “Spasms”
October 18, 1965, Paris.
Knochenstabritzung | bone-rod-incisions: In Behn, Kultur der Urzeit (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1950), there is a reading trace mentioning the natural arts of the Old Stone Age, including “Eskimo incisions on reindeer bones” (BW, p. 755).
Grandelkranz | eyetooth-circlet: Grandel is given as “upper eyetooth” (Langenscheid’s Encyclopaedic Muret-Sanders) and as “large canine tooth in the upper jaw of a deer” (Harrap’s Standard Dictionary). The Grimms give it the meaning härchen, “little hair,” and link it to Granne, meaning “stacheliges, steifes Haar, vorzüglich vom Barthaar, nicht aber vom Haupthaar; älterer Sprache zugehörig” (prickly, stiff hair, rather from beard hair than from head hair; belonging to an older language). Wiedemann indicates that the word can be used both for the hair and for the tooth (BW, p. 755).
“Deine Augen im Arm” | “Your eyes in the arm”
October 20–21, 1965.
Herzschatten | heartshadow: See the similar word formation in “Osterqualm” | “Eastersmoke” (p. 78), where the poem speaks of a Herzschattenseil, a “heartshadowcord.”
“Hendaye” | “Hendaye”
October 22, 1965, Hendaye/Saint-Jean-de-Luz. Celan’s psychological crisis has deepened, and on October 21 he starts an impromptu journey through France that will last until October 29. “In seven days Celan performs a sort of tour de France: Paris, Saint-Jean-de-Luz, Ascain, Hendaye, Pau, Tarbes, Toulouse, Montpellier, Avignon, L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, Valence, Lyon, Paris. He sends a postcard to his son from nearly each stopping place … During this errancy he writes or drafts seven poems that will make up one part of the first cycle of Threadsuns and sends two of them to his wife [‘The ounce of truth’ and ‘In the noises,’ p. 128].” He wrote from the border town Hendaye to his son Eric: “Same day, a bit further on, in Hendaye. I came here over the road along the steep coastal cliffs—it lies at a distance of 14 kilometers from St-Jean-de-Luz” (PC/GCL, #287).
Hendaye: An early draft title for the poem was “Garotten-Grenze” | “Garrote-Border,” the method of execution used in Franco’s Spain. On October 23, 1940, exactly twenty-five years earlier, Hitler and Franco had a meeting in this town.
“Pau, Nachts” | “Pau, by Night”
October 23, 1965, Pau. Celan was born on a twenty-third of November and married on a twenty-third of December; he attributed a talismanic meaning to this day in the month, calling those days in November and December grands anniversaires (great birthdays/anniversaries) and the twenty-thirds of the other months petits anniversaires (small birthdays/anniversaries). As he points out in the letter to Gisèle written that day from Pau: “Again, a happy anniversary! In two months it will be out great anniversary—may we have many more like them, in midst our strengths, all our re-found strengths, raising Eric!” (PC/GCL, #287).
Heinrich / dem Vierten | Henry / the Fourth: Henry IV of France (1553–1610), king of Navarre, then king of France, was born in a room in the castle in Pau, in which a tortoise shell that supposedly served as his cradle is exhibited. Henry IV was murdered by the Catholic fanatic François Ravaillac.
Unsterblichkeitsziffer | immortality cypher / Schildkrötenadel | tortoise-nobility / eleatisch | eleatically: Zeno of Elea (ca. 490 B.C.E.–ca. 430 B.C.E.), a member of the Eleatic school founded by Parmenides, was famous for his paradox of the tortoise and Achilles, which suggests that motion is impossible as it plays on the concept of infinity.
“Pau, Später” | “Pau, Later”
October 23, 1965, Pau–October 30, 1965, Paris.
Albigenserschatten | Albigenses-shadow: Catharism was a Christian religious movement that flourished during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the Languedoc region of southern France. Seen as heretics by the Catholic church, the Cathars were reviled by the pope, who called for their suppression, which eventually led to twenty years of war against the Cathars and their allies in Languedoc, the so-called Albigensian Crusade (the castle town of Albi being a central stronghold)—a true extermination campaign in which a vast number of men, women, and children were killed.
Waterloo-Plein: See the commentary on the poem “Solve” | “Solve,” page 491. For a more detailed comment on this poem, see Janz, Vom Engagement absoluter Poesie, #114, p. 185.
Baruch: Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), a major Jewish-Dutch philosopher who, accused of being a heretical thinker, had been excluded from his religious community.
die / kantige | the / angular … [to end of poem]: Spinoza made his living as a lens grinder.
“Der Hengst” | “The stallion”
October 23, 1965, Pau/Tarbes. Early versions were titled “In the Pyrenees.”
“Die Unze Wahrheit” | “The ounce of truth”
October 25, Montpellier–October 26, 1965, on train from Montpellier to Avignon. That latter town had also been the first stage of his honeymoon trip in December 1952. The first draft of the poem read: “The ounce of truth / behind delusion / shoved my enemies / into boiling nothingness.”
das kämpfend in Herz- / höhe | in struggle to heart- / level: Jean Starobinski had written to Celan in a letter dated March 29, 1965: “My father was a Jew according to the law of the heart (and not the rite); you belong to that same community, and I feel more strongly attached
to it today” (editor’s emphasis). Celan had thanked Starobinski exactly for those words, repeating the expression “the law of the heart” (PC/GCL, 2:261 and 209).
Sohn, siegt | son, wins: In his notebook, next to the version of October 25, Celan had added: “You win, Eric, with me / and your mother” (PC/GCL, 2:261).
“In den Geräuschen” | “In the noises”
October 26, 1965, Valence.
“Lyon, Les Archers” | “Lyon, Les Archers”
October 29–30, 1965, Paris. The poem arises from a note Celan took on October 25 in Lyon: “Café Les Archers, the girl reading the Stranger.” The reference is to Albert Camus’ novel L’Étranger | The Stranger (TA, Fadensonnen, p. 39).
Archers | Archers: Celan’s astrological sign was Sagittarius.
“Die Köpfe” | “The heads”
November 12, 1965, Paris.
“Wo bin ich” | “Where am I”
November 17, 1965, Paris.
“Die längst Entdeckten” | “The long discovered”
November 21, 1965, Paris–February 8, 1967. On November 21, 1965, Celan undertook a trip to Switzerland and also wrote the following poem, not included in Threadsuns (BW, p. 485):
BELEAGUERED
The delusion-runs: say,
that they are delusion-runs,
of the murder-
mouths and -writings and -signs,
say, that they are composed [erdichtet]
by you.
Of the rain don’t say:
he rains.
Say: it
rains.
Say
Don’t say
Say
Don’t say
Say
Don’t say it
Treppe / zum Hafen | staircase / to the harbor … Odessitka | Odessitka: The final word of the poem is the Russian name for a female inhabitant of Odessa, and the final stanzas of the poem recall the scene in Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925) when czarist troops goose-step down the seemingly endless flight of stairs known as the “Odessa steps,” mowing down men, women, and children. Celan had a lifelong interest in the Russian Revolution, revolutionary politics in general, and Eisenstein’s work, but always with a critical mind for both the politics and the art. In a letter to Gisèle of August 21, 1965, he writes after watching Eisenstein’s October at the Cinémathèque (PCS, #267):